Well-toned arms say more about a woman’s social status than an It bag. And they can cost much more, says Farrah Storr

Do you know what £5,000 arms look like? They are lean but not scrawny. They’re
brown too. Not the Vegemite-brown of aspiring WAGs and Big Brother
contestants. No, we’re talking a kind of soft, edible brown, the sort that
Farrow & Ball might call Arabian Sand. The muscles are small, rounded
little hillocks that rise and dip like a Constable landscape and provoke
profound and disturbing reactions in grown women.

I know this because the woman in the yoga class next to me has them. She has
been coming to these classes twice a week for more than two years.